The face of the future

My town It doesn't take riches to enjoy the wealth of heat, noise and colour that Shanghai has to offer.

The Bund, Shanghai's waterfront of grandiose banks and hotels, is the epitome of cosmopolitanism.

I'll always remember how one night, as my taxi sped along the elevated motorways in the wake of a rainstorm, the neon reflections of the Shanghai skyline evoked a scene straight from Blade Runner. A dystopian but surreally powerful vision of the shape of things to come, Shanghai is a city of the future; a city where two worlds collide, at once both a symbol of the capitalist new order and its inscrutable Chinese face.

When I lived there I was working as an English teacher and lacking funds on an academic salary, I never made it to the epitome of cosmopolitanism, M on the Bund (5 The Bund, www.m-onthebund.com). Most certainly the place to be seen in Shanghai, this classy split bar and restaurant has magnificent views over the Bund, Shanghai's waterfront of grandiose colonial banks and stylish hotels. Sneak inside the old HSBC building, crane your neck up at the interior of its domed ceiling, and you'll discover a frieze worthy of a latter day Sistine chapel - devoted not to the divine but to the inexorable pursuit of capital.

And cast your eyes over the Huangpu river to the east, facing away from the Bund, and you'll find the glittering 21st-century answer to it: the shining new business district of Pudong. Home of Shanghai's ostentatious showpiece, the post-space-age rocket ship known as the Oriental Pearl Tower, this really is where the money is at. Just a drink at Cloud 9 in the Grand Hyatt Hotel (88 Century Boulevard), housed in the 88-storey edifice of the Jin Mao Tower (itself soon to be dwarfed by the even taller Shanghai World Financial Center), set me back half a week's wages.

No matter. Just 20 minutes to the city centre via the skytrain, my old neighbourhood, Hongkou, is packed with more mom-and-pop Chinese restaurants than I care to mention, though my favourite local eatery was in fact a Korean dive where I barbecued my own meals on table-set charcoal grills. And if I felt like splashing out, I headed for the Brasil Steak House (1649 Nanjing Xi Lu) where for about Dh45 I received a non-stop flow of the finest cuts delivered straight to my plate.

Home to Shanghai Shenhua football team, on match days Hongkou stadium reverberated to the drumming of the most loyal fans, the "Blue Devils". Next door was a magnificent entertainment complex with snooker, pool, bowling and karaoke (known here as KTV), all under one roof (Dongjiangwan Lu, Metro Line 3). I never lacked, therefore, for "heat and noise" - the Chinese definition of fun. Shanghai life is, indeed, frenetic. For a speedy breakfast or lunch I'd typically go for the kebabs, pancakes and stew-filled pita-pockets cooked up by Uyghurs from the Muslim west. My street food of choice, however, was fried xiao long bao. Otherwise known as "soup dumplings", these are a Shanghai speciality. Watch out on your first bite: first-timers often get a squirt of scalding liquid and lose the lining from the roof of their mouths.

And when Shanghai's noise, grime and mayhem got me down, I headed for Jingwen Flower Market (225 Shanxi Nan Lu). It still retains an old-school charm about it, not to mention the scent of a multitude of exotic blooms shipped in from who knows where. Another haunt was the market on Dong Tai Lu. Brass dragons, Mah Jong sets, wood carvings, posters from the Cultural Revolution: a lot of the "antiques" in this open-air market admittedly look the same. As if they're mass-produced, perhaps. On the other hand, it's a fine place to find some real bargains.

Another alternative is to experience the cafe culture that was swinging hardest during Shanghai's golden age back in the Thirties. Head to the old French Concession area now known as Xintiandi and amid the steel, glass, concrete, heat and pollution that characterise modern Shanghai, you will find a surprising taste of genteel old-world Europe that is currently enjoying a welcome revival. Tradition, modernity, riches, rags. Those who have lived there know there is no one essence to Shanghai. Here, among the dizzying pace of change and rampant urbanisation - no street looks the same from one month to the next - I found a stark image of what China now is and where it is striving to go. It really is the all-singing, all-dancing centrepiece of The Next Big Thing.